[SPOILERS] Loved It Up To The End

[Horrordoc]

The "twist" of the drunk driving just killed it for me. Became more of a PSA than a horror game. I figured the second and third stories were connected to aliens or something (which would've been more horror based, at least to me) but the The Last Sessions just sucked all the mystery and horror out of it for me. First story is the best, by far.

I still really enjoyed the game itself. I think I would've enjoyed independent, unconnected stories, more than a single overarcing narrative though. There's nothing horrifying about a reckless decision.

How much did he even drink, actually? The way it plays out he has like two, maybe three drinks? Talk about a lightweight.

Regardless, a fun game, with great immersion, marred by an unstaisfying conclusion for me.

[fitzroy_doll]

Originally posted by Feesh:

Originally posted by DeadlyDanDaMan:

Terrible ending. You find out you are just some punk kid who drives drunk and gets his sister killed. That will IMMEDIATELY turn off 99.9% of your players when they find that out, because all sense of connection and empathy will go right out the window. NOBODY wants to play as that kind of person. Absolutely HORRIBLE writing decision by the Dev's.

What made it most disappointing to me was that you couldn't change anything. You pickup clues as to what happened as you go through the game. It would have been neat to be able to alter the ending or unloack a 'good' ending for observive players.

I agree with this comment, and the fact that the game uses a free text field, which allows you to enter alternative actions that will save the situation but won't accept them is doubly disappointing.

[Von_Kalev]

Originally posted by fitzroy_doll:

Originally posted by Feesh:

What made it most disappointing to me was that you couldn't change anything. You pickup clues as to what happened as you go through the game. It would have been neat to be able to alter the ending or unloack a 'good' ending for observive players.

I agree with this comment, and the fact that the game uses a free text field, which allows you to enter alternative actions that will save the situation but won't accept them is doubly disappointing.

Agreed.

[Ouro]

I started a thread on this a long while ago, it's on the front page of discussions right now. Some very clever people have suggested that James wasn't actually drunk at all. There's some very outlandish details that don't make any sense, such as a guy with a concussion pulling himself out of a car wreck, working out how to frame someone, then getting back to his own car to not look suspicious before passing out. In addition, the way his sister was just totally chill with walking a smashed dude through the steps of getting into a car and putting it in gear.

It's possible that the officer actually was drunk and the doctor is in with the police or believes the police that the officer wasn't at fault, and so is trying to coach James into 'healing' by confessing to a crime he didn't actually commit.

[3lives]

My believe is that the creators had this nice horror IF idea for the first episode and spruced it up with a Stranger Things art direction.
They were still able and creative enough to make two more interesting interactive bits that are quite original in execution.
However, in ep2 there were already so many clues to the overused and trite coma twist I hoped they would have fooled me.
The guilt twist was not only old, but also poorly told and unbelievable as has been pointed out akumajobelmont and others here.
Still, great first ep that I'm glad to have played.

[Squidyphus]

Just wanted to add that I also enjoyed the stand-alone horror aspects, and felt the overarching narrative was a bit of a let-down. Well-executed, but it made it feel like Dear Esther or any of a number of other indie games that have used the "processing a traumatic event through fantasy" narrative angle.

[troinliveshere]

I can understand both sides. I enjoyed the twist and think it makes things more interesting, but it would've been nice to just have standalone episodes. I'm still replaying the game to try to catch more details than I did in my previous playthroughs about a year or two ago. Something that I really like about the twist is that it didn't completely come out of nowhere, it was foreshadowed.

In episode 2, there was that few seconds of a seemingly random and out of place perspective shot in a car, names have been reused across each episode, the acronym for coma in episode 3, voice actors were reused, the door with the red x and "Red X Tech," it's really cool.

A bit of criticism that others had towards the game's twist that bothers me is when people say it's "teaching us an obvious moral," or a "PSA." Not every piece of media that talks about touchy subject matter is trying to teach a moral. By that logic, Silent Hill 2 and Shattered Memories are PSAs about grief (though in Shattered Memories' case, the past changes depending on your choices unlike Stories Untold), or Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a PSA about revenge and guilt (Update: Or that the movie Climax is a drug PSA). I hope you understand what I meant about my last point.

[Pélagie]

I like the ending. I think that the scariest things are the ones you can actually see in real life. Horror and realism are not inconciliables!!!
Aliens? Monsters? Ghosts? I've never seen those, so they don't scare me.
Serial killers or a twisted human's mind is far scarier. Because we know it could happen for real.
Here, guilt and denial allow a lot of games with the narration. I think it's clever.
(sorry english is not my first langage).

[Tenchuu Khan]

I already got annoyed by the end of Episode 3 because it turned out to be the same old "oh this is just a metaphor, we are in a coma" crap while I was expecting the nukes to hit my base.
And I really loved Episode 3 up until that point.

Episode 4 was just ugh.

I just think this has been done way too many times before and not everything needs to have a major plot - just a collection of short stories works better in my opinion.

Also Episode 1 and 2 share too much of the same twist regarding - this is happening right now.
I think it works.

[MoonMann]

I at the end of part 3, I was thinking "Oh man! We've got break ins, we've got robots inside hearts that can share memories, and we got disappearing radio people! I can't wait to see how these all tie together!" then, after about five minutes into part 4 I was like. "That was lame. Nice tie ins, but i wanted aliens."

[Zizhou]

I don't think I even really cared that it was a rather mundane reveal in the fourth chapter. Guilt-trip induced dream/confabulation is fine. I think what ultimately made me rather unsatisfied with the last chapter was the ham-fisted way it went about doing it. It was like they just wanted to make sure the player understood what the previous chapters had been building towards, that they just jumped straight to "tell," and forgot any pretense of "show." Going through the previous chapters' mechanics to reveal the truth was great! Being railroaded along to that conclusion and only that conclusion, less so. Even if all of it is a totally linear experience, it really seems like any pretense of player-initiated discovery was just thrown out the window in the last chapter, which is kind of a shame given the kind of freedom having a text parser can give.

[LordSutter]

Originally posted by OtakuCODE:

I disagree with those who would have found aliens or something similar scarier. Facing being responsible for something so reprehensible and that killed someone you love and destroyed your life, having no one to blame but yourself... that would be more terrifying than any alien.

!00%
Kinda saw it coming, but still found it affecting. Aliens or something would have just felt cheap.

[derdarm]

episode 3 was wonderful, and it felt like the pressure is building up for the grand final episode. But the ending ruined it all. I can't imagine why you would build such a thrilling story and then just waste it saying it was all in your dreams and you are a drunk loser.

[Cucú]

Not me typing immediately go to the stairs, typing to Jennifer I cant drive you home, not me typing to my father and mother to drive her home instead of me. What an absolute waste of time and what a trash ending.

Not me constantly trying to stop this idiot from driving, and the game refusing to do everything I type so I can keep doing stupid stuff. After a car crash, the whiskey bottle is still alive and well in my hand?

And who the ♥♥♥♥ thinks about not getting time in prison instead of saving your sister in the first place? So much potential with the alien stuff, but devs had some childhood trauma with car crashes and had to preach to the world about how bad drunk driving is. Thank goodness I didnt pay money for this.